Some alarmists are convinced that to curb so-called global warming, we must at least partially block sunlight. David Keithfounding dean of the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago, is one of them.
Keith, a billionaire former University of Calgary and Harvard professor, ultimately wants to poison the stratosphere with millions of tonnes of sulfur dioxide.
Injecting aerosols, diamonds, aluminum dioxide or other reflective materials into the atmosphere about 12 to 16 miles above Earth could mimic the effect of a volcanic eruption in blocking sunlight and lowering the Earth’s average temperature.
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo released 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, causing a sudden drop in global temperatures by half a degree.
According to NASA:This decline continued for about two years until sulfates were cleared from the atmosphere.
Without the guidance of Ivy League technocrats or the help of volcanoes, humanity unconsciously found another way.
Decreasing global temperature They use fossil fuels to scatter the sun’s rays.
Exhaust fumes from cars, homes and industry have long mixed with low-altitude clouds, making them brighter and reflecting more sunlight, providing a cooling effect, but the current campaign by climate alarmists against the use of affordable energy (also purportedly to curb global warming) could reduce this secondary benefit and make global warming worse.
“I think most people know that greenhouse gases have a climate-warming effect,” says Sarah Dougherty of the University of Washington’s Ocean Climate Program. Said It aired on The Weather Channel earlier this year.
“But what most people don’t realize is that the particles that we’re producing and putting into the atmosphere are offsetting some of the climate warming,” Dougherty continued. “So the overall effect is climate warming, but the effect would be much greater without particulate pollution.”
In addition to reducing this low level of particulate pollution emitted by productive society, Keith release He removed the surrogate contaminants with a “fleet of dedicated high-altitude aircraft.”
in
February Issue “To offset a significant portion of global warming — say, 1°C — would require a platform capable of pumping millions of tonnes of material into the stratosphere per year,” Keith wrote in an MIT Technology Review article co-authored with Harvard Kennedy School researcher Wake Smith.
“Neither rockets nor balloons are suitable for transporting such large masses to such high altitudes, so a full-scale deployment would require hundreds of new aircraft to achieve the 1°C cooling goal,” the paper states. “Just procuring the first aircraft in the manner typical for large commercial or military aircraft development programs could take about a decade, and building the required fleet would take several more years.”
Keith acknowledged his plan’s current technical limitations and warned against its imminent introduction, but urged policymakers to consider the possibility of introducing it “sooner than is currently widely envisaged”.
Keith made about $72 million from selling his carbon capture company to Occidental Petroleum, by his own calculations.
Recently proposed He told The New York Times that implementing his plan would not only lower temperatures but could also change the colors of sunsets.
Of course, orange sunsets aren’t the only side effect of these efforts to interfere with the sun and sky.
Many scientists point out that solar geoengineering could lead to humanitarian and ecological disasters.
In recent years, hundreds of scientists Open Letter Calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering, it stressed that “the risks of solar geoengineering are not well understood and cannot be fully known. Impacts will vary by region and there is uncertainty about the effects on weather patterns, agriculture and the supply of basic needs such as food and water.”
Blaze NewsAccording to a study published in Nature Communications in 2017, Shown Potential for increased aerosol emissions in the Northern Hemisphere only Other areas experience droughts, hurricanes and storms.
“This is a really dangerous path,” Beatrice Lindevall, president of the Swedish Nature Society, told The Times. “It could send a shock wave through the climate system.”, It could alter the hydrological cycle and exacerbate extreme weather and climate volatility.”
Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford, argues that solar geoengineering is a threat to humanity.
“It’s not just a bad idea in that it can’t be deployed safely,” Pierrehumbert said, “but it’s not just a waste of money to even research it, it’s actually dangerous.”
“There are certainly risks and there are certainly uncertainties,” Keith told The New York Times, “but there’s a lot of evidence that the risks are quantitatively small compared to the benefits and the uncertainties are not that great.”
While a professor at Harvard, Keith wanted to conduct an experiment in the skies above Arizona. He couldn’t find a partner to launch a high-altitude balloon.
Indian Groups and Other CriticsHarvard University contracted a Swedish space company to carry out the test, which was similarly controversial and canceled.
After the failed experiment, Keith vowed not to be “as open about his future endeavors in the same way he has been,” and he also left Harvard for the University of Chicago, where he has been allowed to hire 10 new faculty members and launch a new $100 million geoengineering program, according to the Times.
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